JUVENAL, SATIRE III
can impeach Verres at any moment that he chooses. Ah! Let not all the sands of the shaded Tagus, and the gold which it rolls into the sea, be so precious in your eyes that you should lose your sleep, and accept gifts, to your sorrow, which you must one day lay down, and be for ever a terror to your mighty friend!
58"And now let me speak at once of the race which is most dear to our rich men, and which I avoid above all others; no shyness shall stand in my way. I cannot abide, Quirites, a Rome of Greeks; and yet what fraction of our dregs comes from Greece? The Syrian Orontes has long since poured into the Tiber, bringing with it its lingo and its manners, its flutes and its slanting harp-strings[1]; bringing too the timbrels of the breed, and the trulls who are bidden ply their trade at the Circus. Out upon you, all ye that delight in foreign strumpets with painted head-dresses! Your country clown, Quirinus, now trips to dinner in Greek-fangled slippers,[2] and wears niceterian[2] ornaments upon a ceromatic[2] neck! One comes from lofty Sicyon, another from Amydon or Andros, others from Samos, Tralles or Alabanda; all making for the Esquiline, or for the hill that takes its name from osier-beds[3]; all ready to worm their way into the houses of the great and become their masters. Quick of wit and of unbounded impudence, they are as ready of speech as Isaeus,[4] and more torrential. Say, what do you think that fellow there to be? He has brought with him any character you please; grammarian, orator, geometrician; painter, trainer, or rope-dancer; augur, doctor or astrologer;—
'All sciences a fasting monsieur knows,
And bid him go to Hell, to Hell he goes!'[5]
- ↑ Referring to the sambuca, a kind of harp, of triangular shape, producing a shrill sound.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Trechedipna, "a run-to-dinner coat"; ceromaticus, from ceroma, oil used by wrestlers; and niceterium, "a prize of victory"—all used to ridicule the use of the Greek forms.
- ↑ i.e. the Mons Viminalis, from vimen, "an osier."
- ↑ An Assyrian rhetorician; not the Greek orator Isaeus.
- ↑ From Johnson's London.
